Do Hindi speakers of English realize the acoustic cues for American English /v/ and /w/ contrast?

Abstract

The Hindi phonological inventory does not include a [v-w] contrast. In a perception study, Hindi speakers identified /v/ and /w/ in American English (AE) words with approximately 50% accuracy (Grover et al., 2016). The present study compares AE /v/ and /w/ productions in bilingual Hindi-English speakers’ with those of AE speakers’ in nonsense words. Two AE listeners annotated recordings of word-initial and word-medial tokens to label F2 onset and presence of frication. F2 onset frequency and F2 slope were calculated. Hindi speakers were divided into two groups, those with length of residence (LOR) in the US of more than five years, and those who reside in India. Results revealed a significant difference between the AE group and both Hindi groups for F2 onset frequency and F2 slope. There was no significant difference between Hindi groups. The AE group had frication for /v/ tokens, but not for /w/. Both Hindi groups produced frication at about the same rate for /v/ and /w/. The finding of no significant difference between the Hindi groups indicates that exposure to the /v/-/w/ contrast in the US did not improve Hindi speakers’ production. This further indicates a need to design targeted training for this contrast.